Why Your Agency Needs A Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Contracting the services of a real estate virtual assistant can help with those non dollar productive tasks. From taking and making calls, preparing contracts, updating lists, arranging inspections and marketing.

If you can’t manage time efficiently, your productivity will suffer and ultimately affect your agency’s profitability.

There is an option that will enable you to exponentially increase your productivity. This option used to be the well-kept secret of many real estate agencies. But its popularity has grown over the last few years.

If you want to take your productivity to another level and turn your agency into a profit generating machine, it may be time to hire a virtual employee.

Or (VA) is a professional who renders services online and in contracted to manage specific tasks or responsibilities.

There are 5 advantages to having a real estate VA on-board:

1. Lower Cost Option – As a contractor, you do not pay the real estate VA standard benefits. The real estate VA is also responsible for his or her cost of business.

2. Higher Productivity – By delegating services to your VA, you can focus more time on the core functions of your business.

3. Greater Business Flexibility – A virtual PA can run any shift you feel would be more beneficial to your business. If you want after-office client support, your online assistant can manage these services while you sleep.

4. Easily Scalable – If you want to add more services to your agency, simply hire another real estate VA. You can find highly experienced candidates who won’t require much training to get the job done right.

5. Less Stress – Of course, with better time management, you can enjoy more hours in the day to relax and spend with the family.

You will immediately realize all of these advantages when you outsource to remote staff.

Tasks You Can Outsource

Today’s real estate VA is no longer just a secretary or Personal Assistant. High demand for virtual staff has made the industry evolve and open up opportunities to candidates who can offer different skills and competencies.

If you’re contracting a remote employee for the first time, you should start out by outsourcing the basic administrative functions:

E-mail Filtering

Phone Handling

Appointment Setting

Calendar Management

CRM Updates

Sales Follow Up

Preparation of Presentation Materials

Scheduling inspections

Preparation and Review of Contracts

Once you’re comfortable with your outsourced worker, you can delegate more specialized tasks. These could include any of the following:

Accounting

Social Media Marketing

Website Management

IT Services

Human Resources Management

Customer Support

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Another option is to hire a VA with skills specific to the additional tasks you plan to delegate. This way you do not overwork your first virtual employee and ensure continued productivity.

Where to Find Your Remote Staff

You can find remote staff from a variety of sources. Here are among the most popular:

1. Agencies – There are many agencies that provide virtual assistance services. These agencies have amassed a number of virtual employees who have a good track record for providing excellent work.

The advantages of dealing with an outsourcing company are that the virtual assistants have ready references, easily replaceable and come from various industries. You can easily find a suitable online virtual executive assistant.

2. Online Job Sites – You can also hire freelance online assistants. They are generally lower priced but many are also highly skilled. You can find them at online job sites such as Upwork, Guru, Freelancer and People Per Hour.

3. Social Media – Social Networks are also great sources of talent. In LinkedIn, you can connect with community members who are online employees or join focus groups to get recommendations.

Facebook is another great resource. In addition to focus groups, you can ask friends and families to connect you to their referrals.

How to Qualify Your Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Before hiring a virtual office assistant, make sure you have a strict qualifying process in place. You would not want to hire just any virtual secretary but the one that best fits your business and your personality.

Here is a qualifying process that you may want to use to find the best Virtual Assistants:

1. Make a Creative Job Post – When writing a job post, insert a “pre-qualifying” requirement in the middle of the content. An example would be:

“Write ‘I am Your Virtual Receptionist’ on the upper left hand side of your proposal. Failure to do this will mean automatic disqualification.”

The purpose is to find out which candidates are meticulous or detail oriented. This is a very important quality for a good virtual personal assistant.

2. Create a Short List of Candidates – Do not hire the first candidate that comes along because it will not give you the chance to compare qualifications. Come up with a short list of at least 3 candidates.

3. Schedule Individual Interviews – Each candidate should be scheduled for an interview. While you should determine the technical and fundamental competencies of the candidates, focus more on the behavioral aspects.

After all, you will have to work with the person. You have to make sure you can get along with him or her.

4. Conduct Due Diligence – Do not underestimate the importance of a due diligence check. You might be surprised what might turn up when you do a simple Google check or visit the candidate’s social media sites. Keep in mind more than 70% of HR Managers check social media.

5. Ask for a Test Period – The best way to gauge the performance of the candidate is to subject him or her to a paid test period. 2 hours should be enough to give you an idea of the candidate’s capabilities.

When you have finally found your online assistant make an effort to get to know him or her better. Moderate your expectations; the virtual secretary is not a miracle- worker but he or she will make immediate contributions to your business.

Always make sure the lines of communication are open and that you remain involved in the virtual employees work especially during the first 3 months. It’s always good to get the working relationship off on the right foot even if the venue is the virtual world.

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More businesses around the world are outsourcing services to virtual assistants. From small- scale businesses to Fortune 500 companies, many have discovered and acknowledged why contracting virtual assistants is a good business strategy.

Virtual assistants are Internet- based professionals who are contracted to handle a specific task or set of responsibilities. They work from a remote location; usually from home and are generally considered self-employed or proprietors of a business that offers virtual assistance services.

Over the last 15 years, outsourcing has grown to become an important component in business development strategy. What was once viewed as a stop- gap measure to address cost reduction has evolved into a process that can actively contribute to revenue generation.

The exponential growth of outsourcing corresponds with increasing turbulence in the global economy. Political regimes are changing; new foreign policies are being enacted and economies are re-aligning their resources.

There is a growing trend among companies to integrate a remote staff member within their work force. In 2011, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer introduced a remote worker plan where 10% of staff worked from home. A few years later Meyer increased the distribution to 15%.

While Meyer chose not to maintain the program, other companies such as United Health Group, AETNA, IBM, AMEX and Xerox started their own remote worker programs.

Contracting the services of a real estate virtual assistant can help with those non dollar productive tasks. From taking and making calls, preparing contracts, updating lists, arranging inspections and marketing.

If you can’t manage time efficiently, your productivity will suffer and ultimately affect your agency’s profitability.

There is an option that will enable you to exponentially increase your productivity.

The Virtual Assistant was once the best kept secret of successful entrepreneurs. However once Tim Ferris, Michael Hyatt and James Schramko shared how their online employees allowed them to grow their businesses, others wanted to experience the same successes as well.

But as with most professions, not every candidate who signs up can get the job done.

Increasing demand for virtual assistance work has blown open the doors of opportunity for those who want to cross over to the online profession.

If you want to maximize the benefits of outsourcing, you may want to outsource to Philippines. It has been the primary destination for global outsourcing since 2013 and its industry continues to grow at an annual rate of 20%. If you want to know “why”, here are 7 reasons you should outsource to the Philippines:

High Literacy Rate – At 98%, the Philippines has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. This is quite an achievement considering the Philippines is essentially a developing economy.